Returned from Zeeland. Great dive weekend

I just returned from a great diveweekend in Schelphoek, Zeeland. I'll blog more about it .. but the most important stuff first:

The dives were great, but it was a bit chilly. Conditions underwater were better than above... With near freezing temperatures and a cold wind coming from the polders, along the dikes.

The good thing, though:

We spotted some divers that spotted a seahorse. This particular one was found at Zoetersbout (/Zijpe) and was already around for three weeks. The great thing is, I stayed there long enough to even do some video. It is relatively low quality, but it gives a good impression on what we saw.

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Zeepaardje from Mrmorc66 on Vimeo.

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updated... now with vimeo video

First Calamari Zeeland Weekend

Sorry for the delay in posting .. but: I returned from my divetrip to Zeeland last Sunday. I have blogged on the Dutch blog but I did not find time to do this in English Last week I went on a divetrip with Calamari, a biologists student diving club in Groningen. I am donor and as one of the benefits I can join the camps they organize. Great! First camp this year was last week .. windy, rainy and cold with morning temperatures not much above freezing.

The Calamari weekend was quite a busy weekend, with 30 to 40 divers present many of whom were trainee's.. so there were lot's of instructors needed to get them certified. My goal for this camp was to get myself certified for drysuit diving. I bought myself a used Procean Technical suit, and hoped to get the training arranged before I went on camp, but unfortunately the planning of the training changed ... so I went to Zeeland with only my swimming pool training done. To bad, now I had to dive without. (without training .. not without drysuit) This meant I had to be extra careful. I decided only to do the easier dives and only opted for Grevelinge locations. This weekend I dove at

• De Kabbelaar 
• Kerkweg 
• Den Osse Haven 
• 't Koepeltje 
• Zoetersbout/Zijpe (hmmm.. not a Grevelinge location)

The diving went great, no incidents, no problems, nothing remarkable... except for the great buddies and the great dive team as a whole. Cheers for you guys! great camp! I'm looking forward to the next camp in June!

Season closes: Calamari Schelphoek kamp 21-10-11

OK, as I blogged earlier on my dutch blog, the dive season was at it's end somewhere in September... or so I thought. Weather was getting worse and diving in rainy weather makes all but the underwater-part of diving a bit less appetizing so I ended my diveseason.

What actually happened is that I ended up joining the Calamari diveteam for their autumn dive weekend in Zeeland at the 21st.

Although the weather was "not good" for wetsuit divers, there was no rain but much sunshine. The temperature was a bit low, though, being only 8-13 Celcius in the late afternoon, with some mild frost at night. I've only managed to make 4 dives as on sunday I was having a bit of a cold myself and opted for doing the dishes etc. instead.

The dives I did were very nice since the light from the sun managed to get thru to at least 5 meter without losing too much intensity. This meant light was good... but visibility was good too. on the four dives I have had moments where sight would be close to 8 meters.

Dive photo's can be found here.